JUST PHILOSOPHISING ON - SOCIAL WORK AND THE ADOPTION DILEMMA. PART 7.

 

I have posed the question before : Should adoptive families have a greater claim to local government resources than what other families are entitles? 

Put bluntly, if an adopted child and a child living with his/her birth parents are at risk of having to be taking into the care of the local authority, or be otherwise provided with social work support. 

Should the local authority be more conflicted  the predicament of the adoptive family, simply by virtue of the fact that the adopted child or young person has had a prior separation from their birth family?

I would argue that it should not. The appropriate way of dealing with such a situation would be for the social workers to address themselves to assessing the needs of the relevant parties.  

As those needs are currently manifesting themselves in the present, and are likely to be doing in the future. 

The past status of the adopted child or young person should not have any overriding impact on the decisions which have to be made. 

Although the local authority's decision-makers might feel a certain 'moral duty' for the outcome of some of the decisions they or another local authority has made in the past.  

This should not be seen as a 'legal responsibility' for the consequences of those decisions. 

After all, in realising its decision to provide the child or young person with adoptive parents and family.  

The authority has, in seemingly good faith, given effect to 'normalising' the child/young person's care, by providing them with a legal 'non-institutional, alternative family. 

To be continued!